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Rudolph Ackermann , portrait by François Mouchet between 1810-1814.
National Portrait Gallery, London.

Rudolph Ackermann (April 20, 1764–March 30, 1834) was an Anglo-German inventor and publisher.

He was born at Schneeberg, in Saxony, where he attended the Latin school. His wish to study at the university was made impossible by lack of financial means, and he therefore became a saddler like his father.

He was a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, then moved to Paris, and London. In 1795 he established a print-shop and drawing-school in the Strand. Ackermann set up a lithographic press and begun a trade in copper lithographies. He later began to manufacture colours and thick carton paper for landscape and miniature painters.

In 1817 he applied his press to the illustration of his Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashions, (published monthly until 1828 when forty volumes had appeared). Thomas Rowlandson and other distinguished artists were regular contributors. He also introduced the fashion of the once popular Literary Annuals, beginning in 1823 with Forget-me-not; and he published many illustrated volumes of topography and travel, The Microcosm of London (3 vols., 1808-1811), Westminster Abbey (2 vols., 1812), The Rhine (1820), The World in Miniature (43 vols., 1821-1826), etc.

Ackermann was an enterprising man; he patented in 1801 a method for rendering paper and cloth waterproof and erected a factory in Chelsea to make it. He was one of the first to illuminate his own premises with gas. Indeed the introduction of lighting by gas owed much to him. After the Battle of Leipzig, Ackermann collected nearly a quarter of a million pounds sterling for the German casualties. He also patented the Ackermann steering geometry.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie - online version at Wikisource

• Forget Me Not: A Hypertextual Archive of Ackermann's 19th-Century Literary Annual reproduces elements from the 1823-1830 volumes of the earliest British-published literary annual, Forget Me Not, published by Rudolf Ackermann between 1823 and 1847. Hyperlinks allow the volumes to be examined by author, engraver, etc., and include references to other works submitted to similar 19th century literary journals.